Plot or Premise

A young woman chosen for sacrifice at an annual festival escapes into the woods and discovers she has powers and a destiny.

What I Liked and Didn’t Like

I will confess up front that I am not a hard-core fantasy romance lover. I’ll read Lord of the Rings, I like Game of Thrones, a bunch of other series, but I tend more toward fantasy and light romance than hard core fantasy and sex. And for the first 50% of the story, I was into the plot. She meets a strong warrior with similar powers, there’s some battle scenes, and while the warrior is a bit arrogant and graphic about his sexual desire for the lead character, it’s mostly about travelling to find a refuge for their kind.

However, just past the midpoint of this first book in a trilogy, the romance starts to become much more sexually explicit, with some very rough edges. At the risk of a small spoiler, there is a rough sexual scene that is equal parts exhibitionism and voyeurism, and yet also equally gratuitous. There’s no plot reason for the change in behaviour other than the man’s desire and misogynistic possession of the woman. It is nominally consensual but I’ve read rape scenes in books that were less disturbing or glorified. Almost a rape fantasy, totally from the man’s POV, with no real explanation of why the normally independent woman goes along.

The last 20% of the book is just plain abusive towards the main character. There’s a reason, such as it is, tied to the plot and a big twist, but it left me with no interest in continuing to read the series. I want my time back wasted on this trash. Oddly, up until the mid-book change in direction, it was decent…maybe even 4 stars? But the last half of the book was all downhill. And not reading the next two is a huge indication of my opinion…I always finish series, and based on the first third of the book, I had already acquired the next two. I’ve since deleted them from my TBR pile and moved on.

The Bottom Line

The ending is graphically sexually violent with little warning

Plot or Premise

Colter Shaw is looking for two kids accused of a hate crime, yet neither have a history of such behaviour. They have both been acting off though and their lives are spiralling with every cop looking for them. Shaw finds them, a simple retrieval for their parents, and then the unthinkable happens. One of them happily commits suicide rather than going home. Colter has to know why.

What I Liked

Colter goes undercover at a special actualization camp where everyone is encouraged to revisit all their negative elements from their life in order to eliminate them and to focus on positive elements instead. A brutal self-assessment to get to the final level. The first bits of it all seem entirely normal until it starts be a little more cult-like. It is disturbing how much the cult leader sounds like Donald Trump’s campaign speeches (a deliberate imitation, no doubt, with some of the mannerisms almost 1:1).

What I Didn’t Like

The great way the cult leader becomes more Trump-like also takes away from the story as some of it seems less “God-like” and more satirical or farcical. While all of the members are “broken” over the death of a loved one, there doesn’t seem to be enough in the “cult” methodology to really hold them. The final ending seems more action hero than rewardist.

The Bottom Line

Could have used more creepy cult, less action